Hall Of Fame

Adam "AKA All Terrain, AKA Aboot Toque, AKA Alcohol-Tobacco-Firearms" Ford has recently moved to the University of Guelph, where he'll be working as a Liber Ero postdoctoral fellow to evaluate connectivity among protected areas in the Canadian Rockies.

We have many fond and unusual memories of Adam. These include, but are not limited to, a Hazzard county-esque chase ending unceremoniously with bout of pink eye, a dustup with the Kenyan Ministry of Fisheries Development, and a tense situation involving a dying rabbit call, a leopard, and an unspeakable amount of mud. He will be missed mightily, and we don't mean perhaps.

Bridget Conneely earned her MSc with Jake through the University of British Columbia in 2011. Through the Gorongosa Restoration Project, Bridget worked to understand the influence of fire on resource selection by buffalo and wildebeest recently reintroduced to Gorongosa National Park. Bridget is now working for the Wildlife Conservation Society's Toronto office.

Ceicil Otieno conducted his student attachment with us from the Kenya Institute of Surveying and Mapping. Under the wise tutelage of George Aike, Ceicil worked to tile, mosaic, georeference, and classify over 400 aerial photos of Mpala and neighboring ranches in Laikipia.

Clint Atkinson worked with us as a technician on the statewide moose project. From humble beginnings sorting moose kidneys under the watchful eye of Brett Jesmer, he now works in the enviable position of large carnivore biologist for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department out of Lander, Wyoming. Way to go Clint; mind those ursids.

Corinna Riginos has recently moved to Jackson, Wyoming, where she’ll have the extremely exciting and wholly unprecedented opportunity to create a research and outreach program through her position as Research Director for Teton Science Schools. Despite working as a postdoctoral associate in our group for a tragically short period of time, we often claim credit for her professional success in the company of folks who don’t know any better. Good luck up there Corinna!

Janet Maclean earned her MSc with Jake and Roy Turkington through the University of British Columbia in 2012 and is now a PhD student at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Janet’s work demonstrated a heretofore unappreciated and (dare we state) pretty darned cool phenomenon: seed and seedling consumption by rodents had effects comparable to those of large ungulates on the demography of a monodominant savanna tree. Chalk one up for the charismatic microfauna!

Simon Lima (pictured here after a trying stint in Tsavo National Park) was an invaluable member of our research team between 2004 and 2015. He is a guru with GPS, ungulate captures, and radio-telemetry, and he can spot giraffes at over 500 km (pun intended, to be sure). And he's the proud father of two of the cutest kids in Laikipia. He will be missed dearly.

Stephen Kinyua was the inaugural project leader on the UHURU small-mammal sampling. Steve was advised by Jake and Paul Webala at Moi University and now serves as a Conservation Programme Officer for the Laikipia Wildlife Forum out of Nanyuki, Kenya.